"That's ridiculous," Chris argued. "Every person in the world has Life Force. Even monsters have Life Force."
"Yes, that's what I'm saying," the other Thief agreed. "Unbelievable, right? But it gets worse. Multiple people saw the Tanker of the Feeble Soul fighting. During their quests, that Tanker never uses a shield. He never uses steel armor as well."
"That's crazy," Chris said as he shook his head. "Tankers use heavy shields and heavy armor. That is common sense. If that Tanker really does not use shields in high-level quests, either that Tanker is overconfident or just insane."
"And you know what they say?" the other Thief added. "That Tanker does not use weapons for offense. He uses bare hands."
Chris felt another wave of goosebumps, but his logical brain immediately rejected the ridiculous story. He knows bare hands can cause damage, but swinging a weapon always makes the damage significantly bigger.
"Those rumors are just rumors," Chris said firmly. "The stories you just mentioned are logically contradictory."
He concluded the tales were just wild exaggerations meant to scare rookies.
The other Thief's face turned completely serious. He did not smile.
"You see, I have been watching the elf in the battlefield since she made that jump," the other Thief said quietly.
Chris looked at him, his full attention captured.
"There was a time," the other Thief continued. "When I was fighting a swarm of Mud Crawlers, I turned around. I saw a glimpse. Just a tiny bit. The miasma, the fog that is in the air, I saw something strange."
"What is it?" Chris asked.
"The miasma fog around the elf." The other Thief swallowed hard. "It disappears."
Chris's eyes widened in shock. He dropped his voice to a harsh whisper. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know," the other Thief said.
"What do you mean you don't know?" Chris pressed.
"I saw it happen," the other Thief insisted. "The miasma around the elf was there a second ago. When I blinked once, it was just... gone. I don't understand it either. The Healers beside her, the miasma surrounding them was just there. But in the elf's surroundings, it disappears."
Chris knew this man possessed the exact same high-speed visual processing as he did. A Thief's eyes cannot be wrong. But the physical description made absolutely zero sense. Even if it was true, a localized vacuum in an open swamp had nothing to do with standard battle magic.
"You are just hallucinating," Chris sighed. "Are you sleeping well lately?"
"No," the other Thief admitted as he rubbed his tired eyes. "I can't sleep well lately. I guess I was just hallucinating. Even if I was not, there is no significance to it."
They completely dismissed the terrifying glitch as a byproduct of severe sleep deprivation.
"Actually," the other Thief muttered. "The one that actually bothers me is not the elf. It was that black-haired Mage."
Chris frowned. "What do you mean?"
"Have you noticed?" the other Thief whispered. "It is common sense in a party. The Mage is always the first to collapse out of exhaustion. Melee fighters use Aura and physical strength. Healers are not really exerting too much effort because they only heal when necessary. But it is entirely different for Mages."
Chris nodded. "I already know that. That is basics. Straight to the point."
"Alright, just calm down," the other Thief said. "Here is the thing. Mages' fighting mechanics solely rely on their spells. They do not exert too much physical effort unlike the Melee. Because of that, all their attacks are purely magic which directly exhausts their Mana. That is the reason why Mages' Mana Cores go empty first before the Melee and Healers do."
Chris rubbed his chin. "That's normal. Mages are the first one their Mana Core runs dry. We see the Light Swordsman vomit earlier, but in reality, it was the Mages suffering the most in this kind of situation. Their stomachs probably reject the Mana Potions twice as hard as the Melee's stomachs do."
The other Thief slowly turned his head to face Chris.
"Then how will you explain that?" the other Thief asked softly.
He looked at Lumina.
Chris shifted his gaze. He locked his eyes on Lumina's face from afar. A freezing wave of cold sweat and goosebumps covered his entire body. He had been so entirely focused on observing the blonde elf, overlooking the most obvious strange thing in the middle of the camp.
Lumina's face was completely fine. She was not breathing heavily or sweating a single drop. She sat comfortably on the rock and casually chewed a piece of dried meat.
Before Chris could even begin to analyze the impossible math of her Mana Core, a loud voice echoed across the camp.
"Everyone, we are going," Thorne bellowed as he raised his staff high. "Prepare for battle!"
The Adventurers scrambled. They stood up, ready to march back into the toxic fog.
Chris looked at Lumina. The young Mage casually walked toward the battlefield without a single hint of fatigue. Celia remained behind in the camp for a brief moment. She entered the open command tent and returned something hidden in her robes back to the wooden crates.
Chris felt a deep, twisting sickness in his gut. Something was horribly, fundamentally off with these girls. He gripped his daggers tight and continued marching blindly into the gray mist.
---
Eight Years Ago
The Feeble Soul party was a little more than a year old. The air deep inside the mid-level dungeon was damp and cold.
A huge, armored monster rushed the vanguard. Brown, the young Tanker, quickly raised his heavy iron shield and planted his boots firmly against the stone floor.
BAAAAM-KRRK!
A deafening crunch of bone meeting solid iron echoed through the narrow tunnel as the beast slammed into the barricade. The impact completely halted the monster's momentum.
Black, the nine-year-old Mage, immediately raised her wooden staff. She unleashed a rapid barrage of heavy fireballs from the flank.
FWOOSH-BOOM! KRR-RUMBLE!
Loud explosive blasts rocked the cavern as the flames baked the remaining monsters in the front row.
Red, the Heavy Swordsman, stepped into the chaos. He attacked a completely different beast covered in a thick, impenetrable shell. He swung his heavy blade in wide, devastating arcs.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
In the Adventurer's Job Class system, there are two types of Swordsman. The first type is the Heavy Swordsman. They wield heavy, oversized weapons and rely entirely on brute physical force to deliver slow, crushing strikes that break heavy armor. The second type is the Light Swordsman. They prefer to use lightweight, slender blades. They sacrifice raw destructive power in exchange for extreme mobility and flawless footwork, allowing them to exploit a target's blind spots.
The battle raged at the front, but an incredibly agile monster suddenly bypassed the heavy vanguard entirely. It sprinted along the cavern wall and rushed straight toward the fragile-looking Healer standing in the rear. Celia was an elf, but she looked like a helpless fourteen-year-old girl.
The fast-moving beast lunged, its jaws snapping open to tear her throat out.
Celia did not scream, and she did not stumble backward in a blind panic.
As the monster lunged straight at her center, she gripped the staff with her left hand. She planted the bottom of her wooden staff hard against a crack in the uneven stone floor directly in front of her left boot.
Instead of stepping away, she threw her hips and legs out to the left side. Because her left hand gripped the planted staff in front of her, her body acted like a pendulum. As she swung left in a wide arc, her upper body naturally twisted. Her left arm stretched tight across the front of her chest to maintain the grip, using the wooden staff as an immovable solid pole.
By violently shifting her entire body weight to the left while maintaining her tight grip on the wooden staff, she forcefully altered her center of gravity in a fraction of a second. The sudden swing whipped her long blonde hair heavily to the right. It trailed behind her head in a bright arc, brushing past the wood of the staff.
By vaulting left, she cleared her center mass out of the danger zone. The monster's jaws snapped shut on empty air where Celia just stood. The beast completely over-committed its forward momentum because it fully expected to hit a stationary target. It sailed helplessly past Celia's newly exposed right side.
Celia's sudden evasion perfectly mirrored the highly technical footwork of a Light Swordsman dodging a heavy strike.
But Celia was entirely empty-handed.
Because she swung left while holding the staff in front of her, her right shoulder was naturally pulled far backward. It was perfectly chambered like a drawn bowstring.
As the beast sailed helplessly past her flank, she dropped her stance. Her left boot slammed flat against the stone floor to stop her swing, dropping her into a low crouch. Her right boot ground into the grit behind her.
Celia released the sealed Mana in her right arm. The muscle fibers hyper-generated and violently expanded her slender limb to the size of a giant's. Still holding the wood tight with her left hand, she pulled her upper body against it to slingshot her right shoulder forward. Pushing hard off her back right foot, she drove that big, heavy fist directly into the monster's exposed ribs.